Benjamin's Home Depot Construction 3rd Birthday

We take Ben to the monthly kids' workshops at Home Depot and he always really enjoys them and he loves construction vehicles so we thought we would combine them for his 3rd birthday party.

The invitations and decor were made using the Stampin Up MDS set Bday Under Construction and I used a ton of ideas from pinterest (check out my birthday party board here).

I updated my usual birthday balloon wreath with a party zone sign.

 Pilon birthday banner beside the table.

 What's a birthday party without balloons?! Of course in construction colours!

 Banner over the fireplace where gifts were placed.

Set up just like at the Home Depot Kids' Workshops. Our location doesn't host parties but were generous enough to set us up with aprons and bug house and bookend kits for all of the kids as well as lending us hammers for the kids to use free of charge! There are tons of more pictures of the kids working on their projects, but I didn't want to post pictures of other people but had to show just one to give you the idea!

This cake is what was the basis for the whole theme. Benjamin saw this cake over a month before his birthday when we went to Dairy Queen and asked for it repeatedly for his birthday! It was the only thing that he asked for so of course he got it!

Benjamin's Very Hungry Caterpillar 2nd Birthday

Benjamin turned 2 last year and we had a Very Hungry Caterpillar themed birthday party. I was inspired by lots on pinterest (check out my birthday party board here) and ended up with this!

I used a Very Hungry Caterpillar download and the Stampin Up MDS program to create the invitations as well as a birthday banner (that didn't photograph well at all)!

I was also planning a caterpillar outside in helium balloons leading towards the door but considering it snowed, that idea got eliminated and settled for this instead in the entranceway!

 Little chinese lanterns set up as a caterpillar in a window by the table.

The food display. I made little food tags using the downloads as well and bought the majority of the food that the Very Hungry Caterpillar eats throughout the story for the guests to eat before cake.

 I made the "caterpillars" out of cake pops and put them into foam flower displays covered in fake leaves.

The goodie bag for the party was a bug house as well as home made play dough in green and red so each guest could make their own Very Hungry Caterpillar!

MDS Contest Thank You Card

I posted my scrapbook page I submitted for the MDS conest a couple days ago, and today I will show you the card I submitted as well.

Card Digital Supplies:
Papers: basic black cardstock, very vanilla cardstock, love letter dsp
Stamps: thank you kindly, fabulous florets, petal pizzazz
Embellishments: basic black brads and grosgrain ribbon
Punch: square punch

MDS Contest: Scrapbook Entry

Now that the finalists have been announced for the MDS contest, I thought I would share my entries. Seeing as it was just Halloween, I will start off with my Halloween scrapbook entry.

One of the requirements was to enter a scrapbook page along with journalling. This was the page I submitted and the hardest part for me was definitely the journalling as I typically do not journal in my scrapbooks - I think it turned out okay though.

Maggie actually wore this costume for Halloween and many of the kids who came to the door were more interested in her than in getting candy!

Digital Supplies:

Papers: pumpkine pie cardstock, night and day dsp
Stamps: man's best friend
Embellishments: pumpkin pie brads and grosgrain ribbon, pick your poison borders
Punch: square punch

Halloween SFYTT

Happy Halloween!

Here's my Halloween take on this months SFYTT.

This is a hybrid card - the image and sentiment were both printed on whisper white card stock after being created in MDS. The rest are actual materials I had on hand.

Stamps: Spooky Treats Designer Template (MDS), Piece of Poison (MDS)
Paper: SU ww, peach parfait, basic black designer series paper stack
Ribbon: SU basic black satin

Halloween Candles

I had been playing with MDS a lot earlier in the month to be able to enter the MDS contest to win downloads and came up with this idea as well.

I created the bands in MDS, printed them, mounted them on black cardstock and wrapped them around the candles. I left them loose enough so that I could slide them off and save them for next year! There are a couple of additional candles that aren't in the photo because they sit up on top of the fireplace mantle.

Fabulous Florets - Summer Mini Preview

I know I have a million floral stamp sets but it seems I always find more that I need to have. The "fabulous forets" stamp set that will be in the upcoming Summer Mini Catalogue is one of those sets. As demonstrators, we get the opportunity to preorder some of the upcoming merchandise - I had to buy the digital copy of this stamp set and a fabulous matching designer series paper called "Beyond the Garden."

I took inspiration from this months SFYTT and came up with the following hybrid card (I printed the floral images and designer paper on whisper white cardstock on my home computer).

After making the hybrid version, I thought I would go ahead and make the same card in digital format too.

I can't wait until I get the clear mount set of this stamp set! I think it will definitely be one of my new favourites!

Supplies

Stamps: Fabulous Florets (digital)

Ink: SU pacific point, wild wasabi

Paper: SU pacific point, wild wasabi, ww, beyond the garden dp (digital)

Punches: SU 1/2" circle

Brads: SU whisper white 5/16"

Misc: SU dimensionals, paper snips, computer

SU Workshop Invitation

One of Grant's coworkers is hosting a workshop later in the month and I'm so excited to share my love of Stampin' Up! with them! I thought I may as well get even more use out of MDS so I created this workshop invitation (based on what is written on the SU postcards) for her to e-mail to those she wanted to invite since I think more people prefer to e-mail rather than snail mail! (I have deleted all personal information)

I wanted to keep it simple but still bright and pretty and I love the way it turned out!

Also, I thought I would start sharing what I use on my MDS projects because I have started seeing things that others have created that I would like to CASE but I don't know what they used!

MDS supplies:

Stamps: Baroque Motifs

Paper: Sweet Stitches (yellow stitches)

Ribbon: So saffron grosgrain

Font: AbcPrint in Melon Mambo

SC321 Baby Animal Squares

As soon as I saw the sketch SC321 last week, I knew I wanted to make a baby card using the retired Wild About You set using the squares like in this card by Miss Boo.

I love the way this card turned out. It will definitely have to be a card that I only give to someone in person as there is way too much dimension to it for mailing. The squares themselves, the elephant ear, lion's mane and lion's face are all raised up on dimensionals (the animal parts were cut using my paper snips - the best scissors ever for detailed cutting).

The "one" looks crooked in the photo for some reason but it doesn't in real life - I made sure by using my stamp-a-ma-jig to keep the words straight! This is one of my favourite "word" type sets in the catalogue because it's so versatile since you can make it say whatever you want!

I'll probably end up recreating this card using other paper and maybe other animal stamps (like fox & friends or animal stories) because I still need a few more baby cards over the next couple months!

Stamps: SU Wild About You (retired), Fabulous Phrases

Ink: SU bashful blue, pacific point

Paper: SU ww, pacific point, celebrations dp

Ribbon: SU 1/4" bashful blue grosgrain (retired)

Punches: SU 1 1/4" square, 1 3/8" square

Misc: SU dimensionals

MDS Wedding CD Cover

I recently had a week off and made myself a huge list of all the things I needed to do so I wouldn't forget anything. One of the things I was supposed to order an 8x10" photo from our wedding for Grant's Mom. I couldn't pick which one she would want so we called and said we would just send her a CD of all the wedding photos and then she could order which ever one she wanted.

Then, just for fun, I made this cover for the CD case to go with it using our wedding colours.

If you are interested, you can view the following things I made for our wedding using these colours:

-wedding invitations and RSVPs here

-my thank you notes for my bridal shower here

-wedding thank yous here (we ended up using the first thank you card that Grant liked better) and,
-our seating plan and table numbers here

Punch Bunch Birthday in MDS

I posted the above card yesterday and thought that I would try re-creating it using MDS to show you how great it looks.

I love using MDS. I like to play on my computer and now this gives me something more productive to do rather than just playing on facebook or games. The only thing that took a while on this card, was using punches to fill all the scallops on the scallop square punch in with melon mambo colour as there isn't yet a feature to colour parts of stamp sets in different colours (fingers crossed that there will be soon)! The shadow feature is an element that I use on everything I create so that it looks like it has more dimension - just like a real card!

Did you notice the new watermark I made on the digital card too? I made it using the butterfly from the Stampin' Up! Bliss set. Which do you think looks better: my original watermark or the butterfly one?

Please note that all of these digital products are available as a disk of digital downloads for Sale-A-Bration.

Another Thank You from Maggie

Here's another one of the thank you cards I made for gifts that were given to Maggie.

The card front was designed using the Pals Paper Arts Sketch Challenge 77 found here.

Here's a peek at the inside of the card too.

This card was made using MDS and the Stamp sets "thank you kindly" and "man's best friend." The colours are regal rose, so saffron and early espresso. These were printed on ww cardstock, trimmed down and attached to an early espresso card base.

Maggie's Thank You Cards

Of all the stamps I have, I don't own a dog stamp so I've been using MDS which comes with the dog stamp "Man's Best Friend" to make some thank you cards for people who gave presents to Maggie.

This first one uses the SCS SC316 as a starting point for the card.

Here's a look at the inside of this card.

This one uses the Sweet Sunday Sketch Challenge 100 which can be found here.

Here's a look at the inside of this card.

Seeing as I wanted to get these out in the mail relatively quickly, I just printed them on my home computer on ww cardstock. I trimmed them down and adhered them to the coordinating chocolate chip card base to create a border of chocolate all around the outside. I found that the only thing that didn't print well on my home computer was the chocolate chip grosgrain ribbon in the first card - it turned out just looking flat like a piece of chocolate chip cardstock. Everything else on both cards printed as they look but a bit darker(if you print through SU the colours will be true to the SU colour.

I'll be posting more puppy thank you cards soon!

Merry Christmas Cards

I hope everyone had a very Merry Christmas! I know I did! I was spoiled again this year!

I just have a couple of other Christmas projects to share to round up the holiday season. These cards are a hybrid project using digital images from MDS as well as actual ribbon and embellishments.

 All of the sentiments are from My Digital Studio and printed in baja breeze ink. It`s so easy to do and you don`t necessarily have to use SUs professional printing services, I just used my printer at home for this project. I had these sentiments in a retired rubon set from SU one or two years ago but it wasn`t in the colour I wanted so MDS made it so more versatile. Plus, you can resize them so they fit better with your project (for these cards, I left the sizing as they come).

Here`s a closer look at each of the cards so you can see how well it works out!

A great tip for spacing out pearls is to use your piercing mat pack and lightly pierce equally spaced apart holes to use as guides for where to place your pearls!

Supplies

Digital Stamp: SU Wishes & Greetings

Paper: SU ww, baja breeze, candy cane christmas dp

Ribbon: SU white organdy (retired)

Pearls: SU white halfback

Misc: MDS, dimensionals

More Fun with MDS

Although I am not posting much these days, I have been busy stamping! Most of it is for Christmas projects for other people so I haven't been able to share much of it!

I've been taking some more time to play with My Digital Studio and made these Christmas images!

I don't really have a particular use for them at the moment - they were the result of my fiddling around to become more familiar with all of the MDS features. Maybe I'll turn them into cards!

New Blog Design

Check out my new blog look! I designed it all using Stampin' Up's My Digital Studio! When I saw it was on for half price for one week only I had to take advantage and now I can't stop playing with it!

ETA: I used Debbi's tutorial here on how to create a blogger background and her tutorial here on how to create the buttons in my sidebar. I used the same sort of method as the buttons to create my post divider and used the tutorial here to figure out how to add it into blogger. These tutorials are quite easy to follow along with - I had never made any of these things before now and I love the way my blog turned out! If you need specific help, feel free to email me!